What Comes After

by Steve Watkins

  She popped her gum a few more times, then shrugged and said, “Fine.”

  When my time came, they had me stand in front of a locked door with no window, and when they buzzed and the lock clicked, I had ten seconds to go in. There was a bare table with two chairs, and just enough clearance for my door to open and for another door on the opposite side. There was another buzz and a click at that door, and Aunt Sue came in wearing an orange jumpsuit, followed by a female guard in a brown uniform. Aunt Sue sat in the chair closest to her door, so I sat in the chair closest to mine. The guard stood by the wall.

  My hands shook so badly that I pulled them into my lap. Then I sat on them. Then I stuck them in the pockets of my hoodie and clenched them into fists. Sweat spread under my arms, and it pissed me off that I was so terrified, my mind flashing back to what happened at Craven Lake.

  Aunt Sue crossed her arms and wedged her hands deep into her armpits. Then she crossed her legs and stared at the ceiling so she could let the whole world know she didn’t want anything to do with me. I tapped my foot nervously. I thought about asking the guard to buzz me back out. I didn’t think I could go through with this. But then I made myself look at Aunt Sue.

  Her face sagged in a way I hadn’t seen before. It was as if all her features were melting away. Her eyes were so bloodshot they were practically bleeding. When she uncrossed her arms, I saw that her hands were shaking, too.

  “Well?” the guard said. “Y’all here to talk, or we done already?”

  “Here to talk,” I croaked.

  The guard nodded. “Go on, then. Don’t mind me.”

  I put my sweating hands on the cool metal table, palms down to stop myself from shaking. I said, “How are you, Aunt Sue?”

  She scratched her nose, looked under her fingernails, then said, “You think I don’t know why you’re here? Well, it’s too late for sorry. Apology not accepted.”

  I was too stunned to say anything at first. The guard made a noise that sounded like laughing.

  “I’m not here to apologize,” I said.

  Aunt Sue shifted her gaze slowly down from the ceiling until her eyes were level with mine. She didn’t say anything else.

  “Look, Aunt Sue,” I said. “I just need you to sign a thing that says I’ll take care of the goats while you’re in here. It’s for Animal Control. Otherwise they’ll take them away.”

  Aunt Sue laughed this time, but it wasn’t a real laugh. She leaned forward. “You think I give a shit about them animals? You think I give a shit about what you want? How much you love them dumb-ass things?”

  The guard shrugged herself away from the wall. “Watch your language there, Sue,” she said.

  Aunt Sue waved her off. She scratched her nose again, then rubbed it. A thin streak of blood came off on the heel of her palm.

  She looked at me. “Book, he already confessed to what happened. Didn’t even wait for a lawyer. Just couldn’t hardly wait to start talking about it. They played me the video. You seen it? You seen the video?”

  I shook my head. No one had told me that Book confessed. I wondered if that meant I wouldn’t have to testify in court. My heart started racing; the first thing I was going to do when I left here was call Detective Weymouth to find out.

  Aunt Sue leaned forward again, quivering. “You think I still got a job anymore after this? You think you can just take a year off for jail and still keep your job? You ever think about all that before you went and screwed everything up like you did? Little bitch. Little sanctimonious bitch. You know what that word means? Sanctimonious? Look it the hell up. You think you’re so smart. Better than everybody else. Just like your mother.”

  The guard put her hand on Aunt Sue’s shoulder. “Stop it, Sue,” she said. “Just stop. Here.” She handed Aunt Sue a tissue. “You got a little blood on you right there. You better press on it to stop the bleeding.”

  Aunt Sue blotted her nose with the tissue. She nodded at the guard and said, “Thanks, Connie.”

  I was surprised. “You two know each other?”

  The guard nodded and said, “From school.” She didn’t offer anything else.

  I faced Aunt Sue again. “Why did you say that about my mom?”

  Aunt Sue inspected the tissue, which had a lot of blood on it, though the bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped.

  She laughed again — that same laugh from before. “You want to play with the little goats, be my guest,” she said. “I’ll be happy to sign a paper for the Animal Control. Only there is just this one little thing. A little problem, you might say, which is that there isn’t gonna be a farm anymore, once they cut off the utilities and foreclose on the house, since I can’t pay the mortgage, or any other bills. Maybe you can drive them goats yourself over to the slaughterhouse, if they don’t repossess the truck first. Wouldn’t that be something? And all this for what? For what, Iris?” She hissed my name. She glared at me. “I shit on you,” she said. “I shit on all of it.”

  She turned to the guard. “You still party, Connie? You used to be a party girl in school. You think you can get us something in here? I’ll give you my checkbook. There ought to be enough for a party. You think you can get us something in here? On me?”

  Connie shook her head. “Time to go,” she said in a flat voice that she probably used for every visitor. She reached under Aunt Sue’s arm and lifted her halfway out of her chair. “Up we go, Sue. You and me go out first, then her.”

  “Wait,” Aunt Sue said. “Wait just a second. Let me make little miss here a proposition, now that she’s got me thinking about it.” She shrugged away from Connie and sat down again. Then she turned to me.

  “You want to take care of them goats, you’re welcome to it. But it’s gonna cost you. You got to pay the bills for as long as I’m in here. Mortgage. Utility. Truck. Insurance. You do that, you can play with them goats all you want.”

  I felt ill. “How can I ever do that? I don’t have any money.”

  Aunt Sue leaned toward me. “Farmers’ market. You ought to be able to pull in enough from there, now that Reba’s giving so much milk. And once Jo Dee kids, there’ll be more. I got enough in my checking account for November bills, unless Connie and me spend it all partying. They got my checkbook out there at the desk, locked up somewhere. I’ll sign you over that, too. You write the November checks. Then you come back here at Thanksgiving with enough deposits to cover the December bills. You do all that, you can have them goats to do whatever you want with once I get out of here.” She leaned back in her chair. “Or else them goats are dead.”

  Connie shook her head. “That’s just mean, Sue. Why you want to put something like that on the girl?”

  “None of your business, Connie,” Aunt Sue said. “And I’m done talking to her and to you.” She stood up. “That’s the proposition. Take it or leave it.”

  I said I would take it.

  After they buzzed me out, I got my belt and backpack and Tiny’s letter from the clerk, then sat, exhausted and still shaky, on a bench in the waiting room. Fifteen minutes later, Connie brought out Aunt Sue’s checkbook and the Animal Control letter. She’d even gotten it notarized.

  I held out Tiny’s letter. “Any chance you could give this to Book Allen? It’s not from me. It’s from his friend.”

  She said she would. I could tell she wanted to say something else, so I waited. “When they first brung Sue here, she told me she didn’t know what came over her to have done that out at Craven Lake,” Connie said. “She told me she felt really bad about the whole thing.”

  I stood up. “She didn’t sound sorry at all just now,” I said.

  “It ain’t easy for her being in here,” Connie said, shaking her head. “It ain’t easy for anybody.”

  The Tutens were out when I got back to their house. I called Detective Weymouth right away, and he confirmed what Aunt Sue had told me.

  “Book Allen did admit to the attack,” he said. “And once he did, your Aunt Sue kind of had to admit everything, too. It
was either that or go into court and convince the judge that her own son is a liar. So it looks like it’s all over. Just the sentencing. That won’t be until next month.”

  I had to sit down. I should have felt relieved, but mostly I just felt dizzy.

  “Was there a deal?” I asked. “A plea bargain?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Detective Weymouth said. “As I understand it. Nine months for Book Allen. One year for Sue Allen. That includes time served. Usually with a sentence that length, they do the time in county jail, where they’re at now. It won’t be official until next month, when they have their court date and the judge signs off on it. But it’s a done deal.”

  I didn’t tell him I’d just been out to the jail, or about Aunt Sue’s proposition. I just thanked him for the information, hung up, and sat stone still while it sank in. I was still sitting there at the kitchen table when Mrs. Tuten came home, and I gave her the news. I said Detective Weymouth had called to tell me while she was out. Mrs. Tuten hugged me, and I surprised myself by letting her.

  “I know you must have been so worried,” she whispered, as if it needed to be kept a secret. “You can get on with your life now. And put all this behind you.”

  She said some other kind things that made me struggle to keep from crying. It felt good to have someone hold me after all these months, and after everything that had happened. I realized that I was shaking — not much, but enough that Mrs. Tuten must have felt it, because she hugged me tighter.

  She was still hugging me a few minutes later when Mr. Tuten walked in the door from work, and he gave me a hug, too, without even asking what had happened.

  For a second I thought about telling them everything — about the agreement with Aunt Sue, about going out to the farm, about how I’d lied to them. But I knew I couldn’t. They would be angry. Anybody would. They would report me to Mindy and Mr. Trask. They would kick me out.

  So I kept quiet, except to thank them for everything they’d done. Then I went to walk the ferrets.

  Because I’d continued making goat cheese since coming back out to Aunt Sue’s, both refrigerators were already full with containers of finished cheese, not to mention several dozen cartons of eggs, so I had plenty to bring to the farmers’ market on Saturday. I had to have an excuse to get away from the Tutens’, though, so I told them we were having an early softball practice. Mr. Tuten offered to drive me, but I said I was happy to just ride the bike.

  I ate breakfast and walked the ferrets early Saturday morning, then took off on the bike, though I only rode a couple of blocks to where I’d left the Tundra, with everything I needed for the farmers’ market stashed in the back.

  The Gonzaleses were happy to see me again. They even helped unload the truck and set up the stand. Isabel brought me apple slices, and wanted to play rock, paper, scissors, and dragged over a crate so she could sit next to me and be my assistant. I let her put money in the metal box and help me make change.

  I spent a nervous four hours at the farmers’ market, constantly looking around for the Tutens’ car in case they happened to drive by. I thought I saw them once and ducked under the card table, which must have looked ridiculous, because Isabel was laughing at me when I came out.

  “I thought I dropped a dollar,” I said lamely — and then felt guilty when she got down on her hands and knees to help me look. I ended up slipping a dollar out of the money box and dropping it on the ground so she could find it.

  Somehow, in between hiding and checking out each passing car and pretending to look for stuff on the ground, I managed to sell most of the goat cheese I’d brought — two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth. I had opened Aunt Sue’s bills and called the bank to double-check the balance in her checkbook. Now I calculated everything I could think of in a little notebook, and figured I would have to make at least that much each Saturday from now until Thanksgiving to cover Aunt Sue’s bills. And pray that there was enough hay and grain already in the barn to get us through the winter, that nothing broke down at the farm and needed repairs, and that Aunt Sue would give up her satellite dish. The only way I could figure out to pay for gas for the Tundra was to use the allowance I got from Mrs. Tuten, which meant I’d have to stop eating lunch at school. And I needed Jo Dee to hurry up and kid so I’d have another milker available and could increase cheese production — and sales — that much more.

  I felt drained by the time I packed everything up at the farmers’ market, but I wasn’t through yet. I had to make a quick trip out to the farm to milk the goats, start another round of cheese, feed everybody, and check on Jo Dee. I could barely keep my eyes open when I got back to the Tutens’. I was so tired that I almost forgot to hide the truck and was about to park in front of their house when I remembered. Luckily no one saw me.

  “Rough practice?” Mrs. Tuten asked when I finally walked in the door ten minutes later.

  I nodded. “Very.”

  The day should have ended there. A long shower. Dinner with the Tutens. Reading in my room. A letter to Dad.

  But then I saw the Saturday paper. The Craven Ravens had lost the night before for the first time all season. They were still in the play-offs, but their perfect season was over. As soon as I read the headline, I knew who was going to get the blame.

  It didn’t take long.

  On Monday, somebody put a three-foot black snake in my locker. It scared me, of course. A small one once bit me on the hand in an old barn back in Maine; my hand swelled up and I had to get a tetanus shot. Another time when I was with Dad on his vet rounds, we saw a six-footer eat a whole chicken.

  The girl at the locker next to mine screamed until a bunch of kids crowded around. A janitor went off to find a machete so he could kill it, but I had a sort of calmness, once the surprise wore off. Dad had taught me that the best time to grab a snake was after it tried to strike, so I held up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to give it a target. As soon as it struck at the book, I grabbed it behind the head. The black snake wrapped itself around my arm, but that just made it easier to carry.

  Littleberry, who I hadn’t spoken to since that night at the mall before the assault, stuck his head through the crowd of kids. “Whoa, Iris,” he said. “Is that a snake?”

  “Yeah.” I held it out toward him, and he recoiled along with the rest of the kids. The black snake hissed, and they jumped back farther.

  I carried it outside and Littleberry came with me, even though I hadn’t asked him to. I crossed the athletic fields, planning to let the snake go in the woods. But then when I got to the football field and thought about who had probably put the snake in my locker, and who’d been spitting on my locker, and how panicked I was every time I saw one of them, I changed my mind. I found a big Gatorade cooler in the equipment shed and slid the snake off my arm and into the cooler. Then I carried the cooler out to the fifty-yard line and turned it upside down with the snake still inside.

  “Man, Iris,” Littleberry said. “I can’t believe you just did that. They’re going to pee their pants when they lift that bucket up.”

  I said I hoped they did.

  Littleberry followed me to my geography class, peppering me with snake questions the whole way. I noticed that he didn’t have his customary dip.

  “Does that kind bite?” he asked.

  “If you let it.”

  “Have you ever been bit by one?”

  “Yeah, but only by a little one. It didn’t hurt very much.”

  “They’re not poisonous?”

  “No.”

  I said “Bye” once I got to class and turned to go in, but Littleberry grabbed my arm. I recoiled worse than he had when he first saw the snake. His face fell. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  I shook my head, embarrassed. “I don’t like people to do that,” I said. “To grab me.”

  He apologized again. “The — the thing is,” he stammered. “I mean. What I was wondering. The thing.” He swallowed and tried again. “I just wanted to see if you may
be wanted to maybe go hang out with me again. Like we could go back to the mall. I could, like, buy you a smoothie. Or I know where they have some of those batting cages where you could hit more baseballs and stuff.”

  When I didn’t answer right away, he shifted nervously. “You want to go do something this afternoon? After school? Hang out or something?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  Littleberry pulled his knit cap off and wrung it in front of him. “How come, Iris?” he said. “I’ve been trying to talk to you, and see if you want to do stuff, but you keep running away and all. I mean, didn’t we have fun that one time? I know you’ve been through a lot. I know it was all terrible and everything, but...”

  “But what?” I said. “What were you going to say?”

  He looked away. “Nothing,” he said. “Just that other people have terrible stuff, too, you know. You’re not the only one.”

  “You have terrible stuff, Littleberry?” I said angrily. “Somebody attacked you, too? Somebody beat you up, and did this to you?” I grabbed the bill of my dad’s cap to pull it off and show him the bald spot on the back of my head, but I stopped.

  I remembered the paper he’d written in English class, and what his friends had told me that night at the mall about his dad. But that was his dad. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything like what I’d been through.

  “I’m sorry,” Littleberry said, for the third time. “I’m just saying. You know. Some people still want to be your friend or whatever.”

  I looked at him then — really looked at him, the way I’d done with Aunt Sue: his long hair and his soft cheeks, his peach-fuzz mustache, his dark eyes, the way his clothes hung off him, like hand-me-downs he hadn’t quite grown into yet. He probably got what he needed from his dad’s closet or the Goodwill store.

  He smiled, or tried to, not quite ready to give up, though I couldn’t figure out why. “Will you just think about it? And don’t be all mad at me, OK?”

  The geography teacher, Mr. Nichols, interrupted us. “Miss Wight?” he said. “Are you joining us for class?”